


some things we do

by snailwitch



Category: Metalocalypse
Genre: College AU, Drug Use, M/M, eventual smut but ur gonna have to wait for that, nathan is a surly 20 something, overdose mention, straightedge nathan
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-05
Updated: 2015-07-15
Packaged: 2018-04-07 20:36:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4277073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snailwitch/pseuds/snailwitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>college au: nathan is a 4th year psych major who is really sick of school and really ready to form a new band, just as soon as he can find the right people for it. unfortunately, he's dealing with some past trauma and some wrestling with the fact that being straightedge in the metal community is kind of difficult. we'll see how it goes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> this au started a lot more simply and was going to lead directly into porn but then i guess it became a v strange hurt/comfort thing that is still going to lead directly into porn give or take a few chapters
> 
> the illustration is mine! :0 im just havin fun!! 
> 
> tw for drug overdoses btw

 

Forty-eight west Sherbrook, Nathan read from the glowing screen of his shitty phone. He scowled, shoved the phone in his pocket, and stomped forward, pointedly not making eye contact at anyone passing him. He was going to a party in this god damned city for his god damned too perky Norwegian friend, and the sooner he got there he figured the sooner he could leave.

 

It was early fall, and the leaves on the sidewalk crunched beneath Nathan’s boots, which he would’ve appreciated if he wasn’t busy replaying the interaction that got him in this situation in the first place: Toki, brown-haired, baby-blue-eyed, and frustratingly buff, sitting on his shitty dorm bed mattress, saying “Oh mans Nathans you have to comes, it’s goings to be the best parties of the year! You’ll meet so manys cools people!!”

 

Nathan had laughed, said “Toki, i’ve been here four years. i’m, uh, pretty sure i know all the ‘cool’ people here by now.” 

 

“Sos, mes and Murderface?”

 

“Man, don’t even count Murderface,” Nathan said, scowling. “he’s like, on the edge of even counting as a person.”

 

“That’s harsh,” said Toki, who got up from his pretzel-like position on the bed and stretched. “Looks, i’ll texts you the address ands you just has to shows up for ten minutes. Okays?”

 

Ten minutes didn’t seem that bad when Nathan was in the comfortable dullness of Toki’s dorm room, but now that he was standing outside and the fall was doing its best to endear itself to him, it started to feel like a death sentence. He huffed to himself. the things he did for Toki. 

 

Two blocks later and he could see the party, marked by the multicoloured christmas lights on the porch of the house as well as the pair of probably engineering majors (Nathan was getting good at telling people’s majors on sight, which felt weird and kind of bad) hauling a keg out of the back of someone’s truck. Nathan winced, _don’t think about it_ , dug out his phone from his pocket.

 

“Are these people gonna be dicks about me being edge?” he typed, sent it to Toki.

 

Toki didn’t reply in the couple minutes it took for him to get to the door, which Nathan kicked himself for not really accounting for. Inside were, as far as his practiced eye could tell, a small group of environmental science kids, a massive huddle of douchey looking poli sci majors, some visual arts kids (it was all in the hair), and Toki, trying to make conversation with an enormously lanky blonde.

 

Nathan parted the sea of poli sci majors, using his shoulders and a convenient scowl. “Hey,” he said to Toki, who was speaking to the blonde guy in a language Nathan had only heard him use over the phone. “Who’s this guy,” he asked.

 

“Oh, hi Nathans! this ams Skwisgaar. He’s on exchange from-“

 

“Swedens,” the tall blonde cut him off. “You ams?”

 

Kind of taken off balance, Nathan looked mutely up at the man- Skwisgaar- before introducing himself. “Nathan, uh, Explosion. Hi.”

 

Neither of them moved to shake hands, and Nathan got the distinct impression Skwisgaar was completely uninterested in his existence. Fair enough. “I’m gonna go, uh, get some water,” he said to Toki, but the norwegian was already back in conversation. 

 

He went into the kitchen and was greeted by the couple of engineers he’d seen outside pumping out beer for anyone with a cup. Another wince, and Nathan scooted his bulk around the perimeter of the room. He opened the fridge- cold pizza, sriracha, a six pack of coke. He grabbed a coke and shut the fridge, not really caring that one of the girls in the kitchen was now staring daggers at him.

 

Out to the living room again, and Nathan wasn’t surprised to see that Toki and what’s-his-name, Skwisgaar, were in the midst of a very pinched and whispered argument. Nathan guessed it was probably about crispbread or trees or something. Before he could go over and ask, he was blocked by about ten of the damn poli sci kids, who had decided to set up a beer pong table in the middle of the room. Nathan sighed. This shit again. _Don’t think about it,_ his brain told him.

 

Then, almost to add insult to the injury that this party had become, someone seemed to have decided that just ambient talking wasn’t enough and put on a playlist of top 40 pop hits, which began to slowly burrow into Nathan’s brain like a horrifying musical lamprey. He lingered on that mental image for a second, tried to make a note of it, noticed his phone buzzing.

 

He took it out of his pocket, checked it. It was a text from Murderface asking if he could borrow Nathan’s copy of I Shall Die Here, which of course he couldn’t, and Nathan was telling him that very emphatically over text (lots of one word sentences) when someone tapped his shoulder, twice.

 

“What,” he grunted, turning to see who’d bothered him.

 

The guy staring up at him (yeah, up, he couldn’t have been more than like five-six, five-seven at the tallest) grinned a grin that made Nathan instinctively want to punch his face in, then said “How’re you doin?” in the thickest midwest accent Nathan had ever heard.

 

“Uh,” he said, trying to take in the guy’s appearance and make an accurate reply at the same time. “Shitty. Who are you?”He kicked himself for asking that instead of the more pertinent “Are those dreadlocks? Are those real? Why are you wearing a bandana with something japanese on it? Why do you have a tiny horrible douchebag beard? Did your eyebrow piercings hurt? Why do you even have eyebrow piercings?” and so on.

 

The little guy smiled wider. Nathan repressed the urge to punch him, again. “Want anything to help?”

 

Nathan rolled his eyes- _don’t think about it-_ and simultaneously rolled up the sleeve of his hoodie. “Look.”

 

“You got three x’s on yer arm.” said the guy, who was still smiling. He flicked his eyes up to meet Nathan’s, green on green. “Straightedge?”

 

“Yeah,” grumbled Nathan, and pulled the sleeve back down. “Plus i’m broke as hell.”

 

The other man nodded. “What’s your name, straightedge dude? I’ve never seen you around before.”

 

“Uh, Nathan. I uh, don’t go out that much. To parties.” The smaller guy extended a hand and Nathan shook it. 

 

“I’m pickles,” he said, and Nathan felt his eyebrows jump up to his hairline more than he willed them to. 

 

“Seriously? Pickles? What’s your last name?”

 

“Don’t have one,” Pickles said, “But uhh when I was in my last band I was Pickles the Singer Slash Lead Guitarist. That’s too long though.”

 

“You were in a band?” asked Nathan, eyebrows still stuck as high as they’d go. “Like, what kinda band?”

 

Pickles seemed to consider it a little and then asked “You into metal?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“You into, uh, sludge metal?”

 

“Kinda.”

 

“You familiar with Louisiana sludge metal?”

 

“Also, uh, kinda. Grew up in Florida and all.” said Nathan, eyebrows beginning to sink back to their normal scowly position. “You were in a sludge metal band in Louisiana, is,uh, what I’m getting from this conversation.”

 

“Yup. Called Snake God. It was a pretty cool joint while it lasted,” said Pickles, and looked like he was going to go on when he made eye contact with someone over Nathan’s shoulder. “Look, I wanna talk, but I’ve kinda got a pseudo-job to do. Y’know. Sellin social lubrication an’ all.”

 

“Oh, uh, yeah,” said Nathan, feeling weirdly let down, but then Pickles was saying “You got a phone?” and giving him his number before patting him on the shoulder a couple times and scooting off towards a particularly drunk gaggle of environmental science majors. 

 

Nathan was at a loss. He turned to look for Toki but he’d been presumably spirited away by Skwisgaar, which wasn’t something Nathan was particularly concerned about. Mostly he was concerned with Pickles and how the hell someone with bright red white person dreadlocks could possibly like, exist for more than thirty seconds, and also if Murderface had broken into his apartment and gotten at his vinyls.

 

“Ugh,” he said, checked his phone for the time. It’d been ten minutes. He was cleared to leave.

 

 

———

The next morning, Nathan woke up at what his alarm clock told him was 11 but what his phone told him was 9:30, which seemed to be a difference solely meant to drive him into misery. He shut off the alarm with a punch that nearly broke the clock in half and turned over, meaning to go to sleep, but he’d no sooner closed his eyes than his phone vibrated insistently on the bedside table.

 

He slung his hand over, grabbed the phone, opened it. It took him a couple of seconds to remember that Pickles was a person and not a jar of brined cucumbers with hands, and another couple of seconds to go through the whole “oh yeah we met at a shitty party” narrative. He opened the text and immediately regretted it: his phone’s brightness combined with the white background seared his eyes.

 

Once his pupils contracted enough for him to actually make out the words, Nathan groaned louder.

 

“hey there how r u,” read the text, “didnt get to talk to u much at the party but if u want 2 hang out sometime in a cupl days we can talk metal ;)”

 

A fucking winking smiley face? Was this guy serious or did he just not know the conventions of modern emoticons?? Nathan flipped onto his back and glared at the text. He did want to talk about metal- not a lot of room for that in psychology faculty meet-n-greets- but his tattoo itched at the prospect of spending time in what could likely be a drug den. _Don’t think about Magnus._ And Pickles himself might be high too, a fact that made Nathan’s stomach do a single beautiful handspring deep within his gut.

 

Nevertheless, he found himself texting back with his frustratingly sausage-like fingers:

 

“hey. just woke up. text later next time. i can hang out any night. just be sober.”

 

He massaged his face with the heels of his hands, digging them into his eye sockets and watching colorful bursts scatter across his field of vision. His apartment was quiet now, but he knew in a few hours his neighbours would be up and clattering around. He hadn’t known about the thin walls until it was too late, and had bought earplugs later still after he’d sussed out by sound alone that his neighbour on the left side was into spanking and pony play. 

 

Nathan sat up, regarded his room (nothing special, not even particularly messy unless you counted a few strewn t-shirts and socks as messy) and padded out of it into the bathroom across the hallway. _Don’t think about Magnus,_ his brain said. He flicked the switch, watched the mirror as it (in time with the flickers of the bulb above) jerkily reflected him, then stabilized and left him staring into his own very green eyes. He bared his teeth, made a note to buy some mouthwash sometime soon, pulled the bags under his eyes down for a second then let them bounce back up, picked his nose.

 

Everything seemed to be in order, as much as they could be, but he grabbed his comb anyway and was in the middle of a nicely therapeutic grooming session when he heard his phone buzz dimly on his dresser. He left the comb in his hair and stalked over, picked the phone up, winced at the brightness again.

 

Of course it was from Pickles. 

 

“sounds good d00d!! come by 2nite and ill have some snacks. do u like nachos ;)”

 

Again with the fucking smiley face. Nathan rolled his eyes but knew that the subtle bribe had worked- of course the quickest way to his heart was his stomach. He pulled the comb out of his hair, checked the time again. Class in half an hour, today an elective to start things off: Greek mythology. Three hours a week of idly taking notes while a very earnest and admittently pretty good prof lectured about gods and goddesses Nathan couldn’t give less of a shit about. _Don’t think about him,_ his brain said. The class still was a fun time, especially because he got to write essays about Dionysus drinking shit tons of wine and Ares being a warmonger for no real reason. Plus the stories about Zeus sleeping around. Now _that_ Nathan could get into, though he still couldn’t understand why anyone would have sex with a glowing swan.

 

Another text came while he was lacing up his boots- Toki, this time,

 

“hey natn! skwisgaar wants to hangs out tmrrw after class!! he has a guitars and wants you to judge a guitars duels. iams not sures what that means but pls come!!!”

 

 _Of course the only angry swede in the room plays guitar_ , nathan thought. _Like Yngwie_. He would have to have a talk with Toki about making friends with probable/potential douchebags. Last time Toki had made a friend who did anything musically-related, he’d turned out to be a coke-addled part-time clown with a voice like David Lee Roth. Nathan had immediately hated him.

 

Either way, he texted back “sure,” to Toki, grabbed his bag and keys, and slammed the door behind him. Why the fuck did he go to parties, he thought. Always got him in weird social situations for weeks afterward, like some kind of bizarre social hangover.

 

Four hours of classes later, Nathan found himself discussing how much he hated school with Abigail over some chipotle. “Look,” she was saying, “Academia is shit, and it’s shit because it knows it holds, like, our entire careers in its hands so it can afford to be- what were you calling it?”

 

“Circle-jerky,” replied Nathan, in between bites of his burrito. 

 

“Right, that. So you get a bunch of academics in the same place, and being an academic already lends itself to jerking off like, your colleagues to begin with, but when you’re in some kind of bastion for academia it just intensifies the effect.” She sighed, ran a hand through her hair. “Makes me so mad, I swear to god.”

 

Nathan smiled at his burrito instead of up at Abigail- her rants were always right, but that didn’t make them any less amusing to listen to. “Just remember we’re out of here in a couple months, and then you get to use that shiny audio engineering degree to produce my, uh, hypothetical band’s albums. No circlejerking necessary.”

 

Abigail rolled her eyes. “It’s even worse with musicians, you ass!!”

 

Nathan laughed through a mouthful of beans too hard to make up for the sudden flip his stomach made, so hard he started coughing and Abigail reached across the table to pound on his back. 

 

——

 

That night, after texting Pickles to get the address (Nathan blinked when he realized it was in a surprisingly nice part of town), Nathan clomped out the door halfheartedly, trying to dispel his initial nervousness through being as surly and terrifying as possible. He shoved his hands in his pockets as he walked and hoped to god Pickles didn’t plan to… to… do _something_ bad. 

 

Nathan knew he was pussyfooting around what he was really worried about, but he wasn’t particularly in the mood for giving himself a panic attack on the way to a very friendly drug dealer’s house. He let a little bit of the memory in-

 

-Magnus sitting on the floor with a 40 of jim beam, telling Nathan how he’d always planned on being part of the best metal band in the world and how they’d do it together, then taking another drink and asking if Nathan had ever done anything harder than weed-

 

-and Nathan clamped down on that memory with all the inner strength he could muster, dissipating the mental image of Magnus’s shitty little soul patch and long curly hair like smoke in wind. He could feel his hands were clammy, wiped them on his pants and took a deep breath. He was safe, he was fine, he was good, he was going to hang out and talk metal with a tiny dreadlocked moron.

 

By the time Nathan had calmed himself down he wasn’t even a block away from the place, and it was only another minute or so before he was knocking on Pickles’ door with one big hand.

 

Behind the door he could hear some music playing- Sleep?- and a quick clatter that abruptly started to sound more like someone falling down the stairs. Then the door swung open and Pickles was standing there with big green eyes, no bandana on this time, his dreads splayed haphazardly over his face. “Oh hey!” he said, and his face broke out into a grin. “Glad you made it, come on in.”

 

Nathan looked down at him mutely for a few seconds, then stepped in the house and bent down to untie his shoes. “Aw man, you ain’t gotta do that,” said pickles, laughing. “Yer gonna just dirty your socks that way. Keep em pristine.” 

 

Nathan raised an eyebrow, shrugged. “Alright dude, if you say so.”

 

“Come on into the living room, man, I made nachos that I at least think are pretty good,” Pickles said, muffled a little through the wall. “And believe me, I’m a nacho connisseur. Had nachos across the fifty states. Had space nachos, the freeze-dried kind. Had, uh, seven-eleven nachos at four in the morning more times than I can count…” His voice drifted off but Nathan followed and was greeted by a living room with a horrifyingly orange couch in it, plus a drumset and a couple amps. One of the amps had an input plugged into it, which was where the Sleep was coming from- another one had a piece of plywood laid across it and was being used as a coffee table. 

 

Pickles wasn’t lying about the nachos, either: Nathan blinked and went “Dude, you went all out on those,” then leaned in for closer inspection and realized “Are those… fuckin habañeros?”

 

The smaller man laughed, sprawled out on the sofa. “I like spicy things,” he said, shrugging. “Makes it easier to taste. Besides, food ain’t food unless you feel like yer being maced in the mouth while you’re eating it.”

 

Nathan sat down next to him on the couch, gingerly at first then relaxing as he felt the couch adjust to his weight gracefully. “Man,” he said, kind of at a loss. “Uh, do you, uh, play those?” He pointed at the drumkit, feeling a little silly.

 

“Well yeah, course I do,” said Pickles, but he was good-natured about it. Nathan felt a little more relaxed at that, but he couldn’t really let go of a weird tension that had started curling in his belly, uncomfortable but kind of nice. He could feel Pickles’ body heat radiating off him like a furnace and the nervousness that had been lying low began to creep up on him again. 

 

Pickles was talking about the kind of drums he’d been using and the bands he’d tried to be in, watching Nathan carefully ease a nacho out of the pile on the amp-cum-coffee table. “I never asked you if ya did band things yourself, did I?” 

 

“Nah,” Nathan said around a mouthful of cheese and chip. He waited to swallow before going on, “I used to sing for a black metal outfit but, uh, it didn’t turn out so good.” 

 

 _Don’t think about Magnus,_ he commanded his brain.

 

“Oh yeah? Were you guys just like, not compatible or like, was the music shit, or?”

 

“Uhh,” said Nathan, breaking eye contact to look down at his hands. “Some, uh, shit happened.” _Magnus got drunk and overdosed on H in the green room and has been in a coma for the last year,_ his brain helpfully provided. “It was pretty fucked up, uh, so, uh, we. Um.” His hands seemed very far away suddenly, and the room followed pretty quickly. Nathan felt like he was being ripped out of his body, witnessing his bowed head, his broad shoulders from above.

 

“Dude, are you ok?” Pickles was asking, and suddenly Nathan felt a small hand on his shoulder. “You’re crying, man.”

 

Nathan hadn’t even noticed. “Oh, shit. Uh. I’m sorry,” but then it was coming out of him all at once, not just the tears, not just the deep sobs, but the whole story, how he’d opened the door and seen Magnus laying there not moving, eyes rolling back, and how the paramedics had reacted with such calm panic, and how he’d had to be the one to get rid of the H that Magnus hadn’t used, and the initial relief when they told him Magnus wasn’t dead, not quite, and then the hope and the disappointment every morning when he woke up and waited for the phone call that told him his friend, his douchebag guitarist, had finally woken up.

 

Pickles listened to it all with a look on his face that Nathan couldn’t read, somewhere between intense concentration and empathy and some foreign emotion he wasn’t quite familiar with. “You’ve been dealin with a lot, huh?” he finally asked, when Nathan had finished and all that was left were deep shuddery breaths and a few stray tears that Nathan wiped away with the side of his thumb.

 

“Y…yeah,” said Nathan, a little embarrassed with himself. “Plus I get, uh, nightmares about it, like almost every night. It’s hard.”

 

He was going to say something else, some apology for telling all this stuff to someone he barely fucking _knew,_ but suddenly Pickles was hugging him, surprisingly tightly for such a small guy. “Fuck, man,” he said, voice muffled into Nathan’s shoulder. “How many people know?”

 

“Everyone else that was in the band except Murderface- uh, he’s a friend of mine who works at a shitty casino out of town- moved pretty far away and stopped talking to each other. It kinda, uh. Broke us apart?” Nathan sighed. “So like, only you know, I guess. My friend Toki knows something bad happened in my last band, but like, he’s only 17 and I don’t wanna scar him with the details or anything, yknow?”

 

Pickles squeezed his arms tighter around Nathan and muttered something into his shoulder that Nathan couldn’t make out. He cautiously lifted a hand up and touched the top of Pickles’ head, feeling the rough texture of his dreads. 

 

They stayed like that for a few minutes, not saying much to each other, until Pickles looked up and asked “Mind if I let go n put some nachos directly in my face?”

 

Nathan chuckled, patted Pickles’ head in a weirdly paternal gesture considering that Pickles was probably a few years older than him, and said “Hell yeah, please do.”

 

Pickles smiled and extricated himself from the hug to turn to the nachos on the table, and Nathan felt a weight lift off his shoulders for the first time in a long, long time.

 

“Hey dude,” he asked, after he’d taken a deep breath and sighed it out contentedly, “Can I, like, hang out here more?”

 

“Yeah!!!” said Pickles enthusiastically through a mouthful of chip. “I was gonna say, like, you shouldn’t have to deal with this shit alone. It’s not fair to anyone.”

 

“Oh, uh,” said Nathan, suddenly a little embarrassed. “I mean, uh, if uh,”

 

“Seriously,” said Pickles. “You need someone to vent to, I got your back.” He reached for another nacho, stuffed it messily in his mouth.

 

Nathan blinked. “Uh, thanks. Cool." He tapped his fingers on his jeans, looked around the room, tried to think of something to change the subject. "Uuuuuh, how old are you?”

 

Pickles laughed, again through a mouthful of chip, but this time had the grace to swallow before answering. “I’m 26, dude. I’m fuckin _ancient_.”

 

“Holy shit. And you’re selling, um, _stuff_ to college kids?”

 

“Nah, grad students too. You wouldn’t believe the amount of weed PhD candidates go through in a month, man.” Pickles seemed to be giggling to himself now, the mood completely turned around. “I once had this guy studying for the bar buy an ounce from me to deal with the ‘stress’.” He put little finger quotes around the word even though his hands were occupied, but the effect seemed to work better than normal scare quotes to Nathan at least. 

 

“Is an ounce, uh, a lot?”

 

“You’ve never smoked weed?” Pickles seemed incredulous at this, then saw the Xes on Nathan’s arm and followed his question up with “I mean, that’d make sense, but like, you don’t know how it works or anything?”

 

“I’ve smoked once or twice, uh, before, uhh. the thing.” _Don’t think about it, you already broke down over it today, keep it together you dildo._ “But I never bought it, just mooched off of other people.”

 

“Makes sense." Pickles seemed to gauge Nathan's reaction pretty intently for a second before going on, leaning back against the couch. "Either way, an ounce is like, 250$ worth of weed, and this guy was buying that much for a fukken week of smoking. I still don’t know how he, like, physically did it.” 

 

“Shit,” said Nathan, legitimately amazed, worries temporarily erased.

 

“Anyway,” Pickles said, changing the subject with exactly no tact, “Wanna hear my old band? Ya get to hear me sing like a strangled cat!”

 

Nathan grinned, said “Sure, man,” and decided that Pickles might be a cool pal to keep around.

 

 

 

 

 


	2. ii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> more nonsense, the guitars duel, nathan and pickle have a moment fueled primarily by lasagna.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> god damn it i'm having fun w. this one
> 
> skwisgaar in this au comes from an absurdly wealthy place, his mom is still miraculously rolling in her winnings from miss sweden or something. idk let's just let it slide
> 
> thanks for all the excitement re the first chapter tho, u all are the sweetest of peaches

“Nathan!” yelled Toki across the street, waving the arm not occupied with his guitar cab wildly. “Gets overs here, we ams abouts to starts!”

 

Nathan looked for cars, walked across. It’d been a couple days since he’d hung out with Pickles, and every day after he’d gotten two texts: one from the redhead telling him about some random thing he’d done that day (which ranged from “hey natn i took a shower” to “hey natn i just saw somebody on a unicycle try to do a three-point turn in a parking lot??”) and one from Toki telling him that the “guitars duel” had been postponed. Until today, when Pickles’ text had read “hey natn u should come over tomorrow and eat some lasagna my friend tony made ;)” and Toki’s had said “THE DUELS IS ON!!!!!!!!”.

 

Apparently Skwisgaar hadn’t been as confident or icy as Nathan had initially thought, and had repeatedly given excuses to Toki like “oh, I needs to wash my hairs, um, it takes all night,” to get out of the guitar duel. Toki had pressed on, stubbornly, and finally Skwisgaar had cracked, even offering to host the duel in his apartment.

 

“I ams so exciteds, you knows,” Toki said, smiling broadly at Nathan. “I’ll kicks his ass, and thens we’ll all goes out for pizza or somethings!” 

 

“What does a guitar duel even entail,” Nathan asked. “Like, do you hit each other with the guitars or is it more of a musical thing, or, uh, do you guitar-joust?”

 

“What’s a joust? Ands yeah, it’s a musicals thing. We plays as hards as we cans and thens whoever fucks up the worsts loses.” Toki stopped walking abruptly. “We’re here!”

 

They walked up the stairs and Toki knocked on the door, nearly vibrating with excitement and (probably, Nathan thought) nervous tension. “Ams you goings to cheer for me?”

 

“Uh, yeah, I guess. I’ll try.” Not a goddamn chance. 

 

Skwisgaar swung the door open with a flourish that made Toki and Nathan jump, considering they hadn’t heard any footsteps preempting it. “Welcomes,” he said, looking down his nose at Toki. “Get readys to have your ass kickeds.”

 

Nathan suddenly felt that all this was getting extraordinarily silly very quickly.

 

They walked inside, took their boots off at Skwisgaar’s request, padded in socked feet into the living room. The walls were white, the couch was white, the curtains were white. Nathan had the distinct thought that if he dug around long enough in some forgotten cupboard he’d find a very long Ikea receipt detailing every possession Skwisgaar had- okay, except for the amps, and except for the very shiny Thunderhorse the Swede held, looping the strap around his neck.

 

“Does you needs a cable,” he asked Toki, who was wrestling with his Flying V’s case. 

 

“Ja,” Toki said, unfolding a strap from his pocket and attaching it to his guitar. “Ands, uh, I only brought my cabs, so it won’t bes very louds.”

 

As they kept talking about cables this and amps that, Nathan took a seat on the couch (which was about as comfortable as a leather-covered rock) and got out his phone. He thought about it for a second, texted Pickles.

 

“am about to watch a guitar duel. seems silly. lasagna tomorrow is good. see you then.”

 

He was about to text someone else just to have something to occupy him, but Skwisgaar hitting a power chord interrupted his thoughts like a lightning bolt. “Pays attention,” he said, glaring at Nathan. “If yous the judge, yous have to does your job.”

 

Nathan looked at Toki, who shrugged sheepishly. ”I'm judging? Since when?"

 

"Since nows, because I says so." The Swede rolled his eyes, looked over at Toki, and barked something in the over-the-phone language that Nathan couldn’t understand. Toki nodded, though, and strummed a few chords, moving up the neck of his guitar in spurts, before he dropped his hands and let the notes fade.

 

“Alrights,” said Skwisgaar, after the sustain of Toki’s playing finally gave out. “Tries to follows me as best yous cans!”

 

Then they were both off, fingers flying, sweep picking, sometimes Toki echoing Skwisgaar in chorus, sometimes harmonizing, sometimes syncopated one beat off from each other. All of it loud and crackling up Nathan’s spine like he’d stuck his finger in a socket. _Holy shit,_ he thought. _Skwisgaar’s good. Really good. Good-enough-for-a-band good. Maybe better than that, with more practice._

 

Toki was surprised too, by the look on his face and the sudden concentration- Nathan could always tell he was trying harder than usual when he started biting his lip- and the fact that he was seemingly naturally falling into the role of rhythm guitar, letting Skwisgaar solo over his arpeggios on the 20somethingth fret to his heart’s content.

 

They shifted keys and this time Toki tried to take over the lead, but Skwisgaar pressed something underfoot and suddenly his guitar _screamed_ at a pitch Nathan was pretty sure didn’t correlate with where his fingers were. Toki stopped playing and yelled “NOTS FAIRS!!!!!”, letting the pick drop from his fingers. Feedback squealed.

 

“You never saids no pedals,” said Skwisgaar calmly over the wailing amp, shrugging. “I ams just taking alls the advantages I cans.”

 

“Whys not use a phasers??? Or a distortions?? Whys the whammy???” asked Toki, though to Nathan it sounded more like pleading. 

 

“It sounds the bests,” said the Swede. “Ands cuts that feedsback, it makes you sounds-”

 

Toki braced for the impact of some sort of heinous insult, and Nathan figured it was about time he calmed down the brewing fight that had somehow started. “Guys,” he interrupted.

 

“Whats do yous wants,” asked Skwisgaar, annoyed. Nathan suddenly felt his palms sweat as the Swede made icy eye contact with him, and tried to remember the last time he felt so strangely intimidated.

 

“If this is, uh, about who’s good at guitar, you both are. You’re both, uh, good at it. Great at it. If I, uh, get around to starting a new band,” - _don’t think about him-_ “I want both of you. Um. In it.” Nathan looked awkwardly from Toki to Skwisgaar, taking in both Toki’s sudden “dear-god-this-can’t-be-real-I’m-dreaming expression and Skwisgaar’s newly-appeased nodding. “It’d be death metal, I think. Uh. Do you like death me-“

 

“Nathans,” said Skwisgaar, “I likes anything as longs as it’s metals and as longs as I can plays as fasts as possible.”

 

“Good to have you, um. On board.” Nathan sighed. “I still have to find a drummer, which shouldn’t be hard, and uh. I still have to, um.” _How do I explain that I have to work through the grief of losing my previous lead guitarist? How do I explain that the idea of being onstage with another band feels like the most heinous thing I could ever do to Magnus? How do I manage to keep a death metal band sober??_

 

“You stills have to dos stuff,” said Toki, nodding. “Wes understands.”

 

“We dos?” 

 

“ _Yes._ ”

 

—— —————

 

“…And, like, then he stepped on a pedal, which was apparently against the rules, and, uh, Toki got pissed but basically long story short now I have two guitarists for the band that might happen if I manage to get past, uh, the _thing_ ,” Nathan explained, nestled deeply into Pickles’ horrible orange couch. “I should really think of something more interesting than _the thing_ to call it, y’know?”

 

“Don’t worry about it,” said Pickles, who was rapidly demolishing a full plate of vegetarian lasagna. This had been procured apparently courtesy of his friend Tony, who sometimes took a strange pity on Pickles’ job/living situation and brought over various casseroles, invariably homemade and steaming. “The fact that you’re even talkin about it is great, honestly.” He pointed a fork at Nathan, who had abruptly stopped trying to make eye contact. “Yer doin’ good, dude.”

 

“Uh, thanks,” said Nathan, tucking a piece of hair behind his ear absentmindedly. “So, uh, either way, if I end up getting past, uh… you know, I could actually have a band together. The two guitarists, and then I could call Murderface up and get him to play bass again, and then uhh-“

 

“I could play drums,” said Pickles innocently, and Nathan’s stomach did a flip.

 

“We’d. Uh. Have a whole band then.”

 

“Sher would. Are you _positive_ you don’t want more of this lasagna.”

 

“Uh, yeah.” Nathan sat there for a second, not sure why he felt so uncomfortable. “It’s just that, uh,” he tried, ineffectually waving his hands, “I think it feels bad? To know that I could just, um, start up a new band just like that? Without him? Like, as if he never even existed?”

 

He knew he’d hit the nail on the head when he felt his stomach and heart switch places, his body starting to feel not real, cartoony. “Fuck,” he said, hands clenching.

 

Pickles stood up and crossed the room, sat next to Nathan. “Hey. Dood. Can I grab one of yer hands?”

 

Nathan nodded but the motion seemed so far away that when he felt a small hand wrap around his he nearly jolted out of his seat. 

 

“Whoa. It’s cool. I think yer doin’ what people do sometimes on k, disassociating. You gotta ground yerself. Kin you, uh, look up? Tell me what the first thing you see is, but in like, real intense detail?” said Pickles, squeezing Nathan’s hand. Nathan didn’t really feel it so much as gradually become aware of it, but he looked up anyway and was met with the drum set across the room. 

 

“Um. Uh.”

 

“Take yer time, dood.”

 

“It’s, um. A drum set.” Nathan felt weird, panicky. He clenched his fists, but Pickles squeezed back and it somehow relaxed him. “It, uh. It’s black. Shiny and black. There’s two kickdrums. Three, no, four cymbals. I think one of them’s a splash one? The tiny one. Um. There’s a snare drum, and two toms, and a floor tom beside the second kickdrum. I can’t tell from here, but I think that the pedal for the hi hat is one of those that like, also works for one of the kickdrums. Uh.”

 

He took a breath, looked down at Pickles, who was staring at Nathan’s hand with a concerned look. Pickles’ eyes snapped up and met Nathan’s, suddenly, and he gave a tiny smile.

 

Nathan sighed. “I, uh, feel a bit better. Okay, a lot better.” Pickles didn’t say anything, but squeezed Nathan’s hand a little harder. 

 

They sat like that for a while, Nathan feeling his heartrate slowing, evening out to a steady thump. Eventually Pickles broke the silence and asked “So, uh, does that happen often? The dissociation?”

 

“Yeah, kind of,” said Nathan, slumping back into the chair and looking up at the ceiling. “It used to happen a lot more often, when uh… things were more recent.”

 

“Makes sense,” Pickles said, imitating the bigger man’s posture. “Do you usually just like, ride it out?”

 

Nathan nodded. He noticed kind of belatedly that Pickles hadn’t let go of his hand, but didn’t feel a need to tell him to let go. It was kind of nice and really comforting, and anyway, when was the last time he’d had any physical contact aside from a handshake?

 

“That’s rough, dude,” the redhead muttered, then looked over at Nathan. “Next time that happens, you should come over, if you want.” 

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Yeah. I mean, you seem to be more of a stranger to making it stop than I am, and also you can vent to me about, uh, _things_.” Pickles squeezed Nathan’s hand again. “Or I guess you can text me and I can come over to your place, if you tell me where it is. Either way, I don’t wan’t you to be alone.”

 

Nathan felt a little ball of some emotion- anxiety?- release in him, replacing itself with a warm and cozy feeling he didn’t quite have words for. “Thanks.”

 

Pickles shrugged. “Don’t mention it, dude. And, uh, there is so much more lasagna left that I have to like insist that you eat some or at _least_ take some home.” He reached up with his unoccupied hand, pinched Nathan’s cheek gently. “You look downright malnourished.”

 

“Ow,” said Nathan, laughing. “Alright, alright. I’ll take some home, on the condition that you start trying to find a practice space.” _I can do this,_ he thought. _Just gotta push it a little bit every day until I’m over it._

 

The redhead’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “Man, if you say so. But I’m gonna look wayyyy slowly.”

 

“Seems fair.”

 

They sat in silence for a couple seconds, conversation dried up, becoming more and more aware that Nathan’s big hand was still wrapped around Pickles’, but for some reason Nathan didn’t want to be the one to point it out. He figured he could just give some excuse, like that he was still a little zonked out from dis- whatever Pickles called it. He was surprised then when Pickles asked “Do you mind if, uh, I keep my hand there for a while?” and even more surprised when his own mouth said “Nah, it’s fine.”

 

Nathan shrugged to himself. Maybe he’d just have to learn to take things in stride.

 


	3. iii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> things get very abruptly steamy but not for long :0

 

Weeks passed quickly, Nathan finding himself embroiled in classwork and trying to wrangle the combined schedules of his new band. He’d called Murderface up a few days after Pickles had found a practice space in a warehouse-turned-loft space not far out from downtown, which Pickles even had sweet talked the owner into letting them have a free trial period for. Nathan was pretty sure that some sort of deal had gone into that particular perk, but he wasn’t about to investigate too far. Calling Murderface had been easy, though. The conversation had basically been about thirty seconds long, and Nathan was thankful that the only hesitation the bass player had was if he would have to pay for anything.

 

“If you’re _schure_ I don’t have to pay for schit, I’m in,” he’d lisped. Nathan could feel the ghost of the spit that he’d undoubtably sprayed into his phone on his cheek. “Juscht make sure nobody elsche caresch if I come in looking like a hobo, causche _man_ have I not taken a schower in like, a few weeksch.”

 

“Please just, uh, shower before you get there, okay? I don’t want anyone scared off.”

 

“The schacrificesches I make for my craft,” Murderface had muttered, good-naturedly.

 

Now the challenge was to actually find time to get to the space in between endless papers and studying for exams with Abigail. It took a few weeks to even find a free spot in his own schedule, but this was compounded by Toki and Skwisgaar’s own classes and finals and clubs and what seemed to Nathan like a million other obligations. Finally, after a bunch of phone calls and some crafty moving around of study groups, a time was settled. 

 

Through the whole fiasco Nathan hadn’t even really had time to worry about pretty much anything, so when he began to feel the rising panic a few days before they’d all scheduled to meet up in the practice space it came more as a shock than as anything else.

 

He rolled off his bed, padded to the bathroom, splashed cold water on his face. _It’s okay,_ he told himself, looking at his reflection in the mirror. He looked slightly damp but mostly just plain tired. _Everything is going to be fine. I’m not going to think about what happened, and I’m going to go to sleep and not think about it and definitely not dream about it and…_

 

He looked down at his hands, clenching the sides of the sink. _Okay maybe I am thinking about it. Fuck._

 

Nathan cast a glance over at his bed, where his phone lay. _I could call Pickles. I probably should. It’s only like 11, he’ll be awake._ A look back in the mirror. He looked more sweaty than damp now, and the bags under his eyes were still there, purple. _Fuck._

 

He shut the bathroom door, grabbed his phone, sat on his bed, stared at the screen for a few seconds. _What if he’s high?_ his brain asked. _What if you call him right in the middle of a binge?_

 

Nathan’s thick fingers pressed Pickles’ number, then the button for speakerphone. One ring. Two rings. Three-

 

“Heeeeello?” came Pickles’ voice, scratchy through the speakers. Nathan could hear something bass-heavy playing in the background, but couldn’t quite make it out.

 

“Hey, uh, Pickles?” he said. “It’s Nathan.”

 

“Oh hey, dood! What’s up?”

 

“Uh…” Nathan paused. “I’m having some, uh, trouble. Dealing. With, uh. Stuff.”

 

“Oh man. Oh.” Pickles’s voice went from casual, jovial, to a lot more somber in a split second. “Do you need me to help you out? Like, are you feelin kinda floaty?”

 

“Y…yeah.”

 

“Okay. Uh, text me your address. I’ll come by.” Pickles paused, took a deep breath. “Also dude, uh. I’m a little drunk. Is that gonna be a big problem?”

 

Nathan winced. “Nothing else?”

 

“Nah, I promise.”

 

“Fine. I’ll text you. Bye.” He hung up before he could hear Pickles’ goodbye and tried to slow down his breathing, which had sped up to almost hyperventilation through the conversation. _Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck._ He barely registered that he was typing his address into his phone, sending it to Pickles, but felt it when he threw the phone across the room and into the beanbag chair next to the window. He laid down on the bed, spreadeagle.

 

 _Oh god. Okay. He’s not very drunk so I might not even notice it. It’ll be fine. I just have to not think about-_ an image of Magnus, happy, beer bottle in hand, pulling Nathan close for a noogie- _fuck-_ another image, this one after a show, everyone sweaty and all smiles and Magnus smiling more than usual, which he told Nathan later was all due to a single pill of MDMA- _god damn it -_ Magnus screaming at their drummer, trying to micromanage every single beat, trying to make the song how he heard it in his head.

 

The doorbell rang and Nathan started, sitting up so fast his vision got clouded with sudden colours that faded after a couple seconds. _Shitshitshitshitshit,_ he thought with every step closer to the door. It seemed to loom at him even from across the room, and the act of folding his fingers around the doorknob felt like holding a handful of ice. He opened the door anyway and was greeted by Pickles looking up at him with a very concerned expression. 

 

“Aw dood oh jeez you look sick as hell,” the smaller guy was already saying, and before Nathan could say anything back or like explain _why_ he looked sick as hell, Pickles had wrapped his arms around him. 

 

“Uh,” said Nathan, a little uncomfortable. 

 

“Man you shoulda called me earlier or I, I shoulda known, of course you’d be on edge now that we have a goddamn schedule,” Pickles was saying, though it was muffled into Nathan’s chest. He took a breath, gently let go of the singer. “Uh, sorry, man. I dunno what your stance on hugs are.”

 

“It’s fine,” Nathan said, but part of him was screaming to be held again, given that physical attention and comfort he hadn’t had in so long. “I’m. Uh. I don’t really mind,” he found himself saying, and then he found himself being led by Pickles towards his bed, and then he found himself wrenched back into his body- when had he seemed to float upwards, witnessing everything happening? Some time before? He didn’t know. But the warmth of Pickle’s arms and the tightness of the sudden hug made him painfully aware of where he was, who he was, what he’d seen and what he was leaving behind. And for the second time he cried in front of the smaller man. Wept, really.

 

“Hey,” Pickles said, after Nathan had petered out to tiny sobs, ones that were more like shakey breaths than anything else. “Wanna talk about it?”

 

“It’s nothing I haven’t told you before,” rasped Nathan. Crying had fucked up his throat somehow, but he didn’t care at this point. “Like, it’s all the same sorta shit, just, uh, mixed up in a different way.” He snuffled, wiped his nose with his sleeve.

 

Pickles nodded. “Figured I’d ask in case there was, like, other stuff behind it.”

 

“Like what?” asked Nathan, legitimately confused.

 

“Like, I dunno, I thought maybe you guys were dating or something.”

 

For a second, Nathan stared at Pickles with his mouth hanging open, taken completely off guard. Then his eyes went big, he leaned back, and laughter bubbled out of his chest. “Oh my god,” he managed to get out between laughs, “Us?? Dating? Jesus christ!”

 

“Fuck, you _scared_ me,” said Pickles, visibly shaken. “Didn’t expect you to start laughin like that.” 

 

Nathan scoffed. “I needed a laugh, honestly. And like… Where the fuck did you get that idea from? I’m allowed to care about my bandmates, y’know?”

 

“Nah, I get that,” said Pickles, shrugging. 

 

Nathan gave a few more chuckles, sighed. “Besides, dude, Magnus is— uh, was- straight as an arrow. Devoted to pussy. He’d sooner burn in hell than kiss me on the cheek.” Surprisingly, this time he didn’t feel the weird floaty shit happening. Even as he said Magnus’ name, Nathan remained firmly present, planted on his bed with Pickles beside him, the memories he usually needed to push back under not even daring to come up for air. He looked down at the drummer, eyes suddenly wide.

 

“Holy shit,” he said. “I’m. I’m not dis-, uh. Whatever you called it last time. Holy shit.”

 

Pickles smiled up at him. “Dissociating, dood.”

 

“Yeah, _that_. Holy fuck. This is the first time I haven’t while talking about him. Like, since it all happened.” Nathan wasn’t sure how to feel- wasn’t sure to be overjoyed that Magnus’ spectre seemed to be leaving, or deeply sad about the same thing. Wasn’t sure whether or not to smile, to frown. 

 

He was sure that Pickles had picked up one of his big paw-like hands and was squeezing it tightly. And he was sure that it felt really, really nice.

 

“Hey, uh,” he started, took a breath. “Do you mind if you. Um. Stay here? Tonight?” He couldn’t make eye contact with Pickles, but could feel the smaller man’s gaze burning a hole through his cheek. “Like, because. Um. I get nightmares. And I think having you around w-“

 

“Would help?” asked Pickles. 

 

“Yeah.” Nathan could feel himself blushing now, scarlet. “I mean, if you’re uncomfortable, it’s cool, I just-“

 

“Nah, sounds fine. How do you sleep? Yer side? Stomach?”

 

Nathan turned and gaped at Pickles for a solid couple of seconds before his brain connected to his mouth. “Uh. Stomach. Are you like, serious?”

 

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Pickles stood up, unreadable in expression. “So like, d’you wanna sleep now or what, because I gotta be up early and I know you gotta be too since you keep on whining to me about yer classes.”

 

“Uh,” Nathan said, still kind of processing the situation. This is not what he’d expected. “I guess yeah, that’s fine.”

 

“Cool,” Pickles said, and then he shucked off his shirt and pants and sat on the edge of Nathan’s bed in just a pair of dolphin-print boxers. “Let’s get cozy.”

 

Nathan stared at him. “Uh, okay.” He knew he was probably flushed just out of nervousness, but Pickles had a nice build, or something. Skinny but not the kind of wiry skinny that made Nathan hear the ghost of his mother’s voice trying to offer him a sandwich. Either way, he decided to push that observation to the back of his head, and took off his shirt. His pyjama pants rustled against the sheets as he slid into bed, looked over at Pickles, shrugged. “Come on in, uh. I guess.”

 

“Dood, did you used to play football?” asked Pickles, scooting in beside Nathan’s bulk. “You’re, like, how do they say it. Built.”

 

“Yeah,” said Nathan, turning onto his side, then his stomach, resting his chin on folded hands. “Back in high school, a little bit in freshman year here, but I’m not dedicated enough to really do college level sports. Takes too much time, and I kinda want, um, to do other things, y’know?” Instead of the _don’t think about Magnus_ litany he was used to thinking at night, he was now furiously thinking _don’t think about Pickles in your bed next to you_ with a fervour that would have impressed any psychics around. Luckily the area was psychic-free, and remained so even as Nathan reached for the lamp’s pull cord and plunged his room into darkness.

 

 

———

 

_magnus running across the room, jumping on the mattress, launching himself knees-and-elbows first into the wall, yelling like a banshee. “fuck!!! look what i did!!” he’s saying, pointing to the four dents five feet above the ground. he’s laughing and he’s alive and he’s not sallow, not withered, not the magnus nathan remembers stabbing him in the back with a pocketknife._

 

_this magnus is smiling at nathan with full cheeks and nathan feels so relieved, and he’s opening his mouth to say so when magnus’s face slips and fuck, they’re not in the mord-apartment anymore, they’re in the ER, and nathan has to watch as all the joy and the baby fat fade from magnus’s face like a mask and he withers like a skeleton._

 

_nathan can feel the scar on his back twist and skeleton-magnus’s eyes open and he pulls nathan close to his mouth abruptly with a gaunt arm and he whispers something but nathan can’t hear it, he’s so weak, he’s so sick, and he whispers it again and then, and then—_

 

 _“NATHAN,”_ Pickles was yelling, straddling the bigger man, shaking him awake, his eyes big and green even in the low light from the streetlight shining through the blinds. “Holy shit, are you okay? You were, like, screaming shit and shaking and like, I figured I should wake you up, and _fuck_ are you okay?”

 

Nathan took a breath, another one. He felt the weight of Pickles’ body pressing him down and the smell of patchouli on him and slowly realized where he was. Somehow he’d turned over in his sleep, and his sheets were balled up in his hands. He unclenched them slowly. “Yeah,” he said after a while. “I’m fine. It, uh, was just a nightmare.”

 

“About, um. You-know-who?”

 

Nathan nodded, avoiding eye contact. “It happens a lot.”

 

Pickles looked down at him with an expression Nathan couldn’t read, but guessed was something like sadness. “Wanna talk about it?”

 

“They’re all basically the same dream,” Nathan rumbled, shrugging. “Me and Magnus are hanging out, and everything’s fine, and then suddenly his face melts off and we’re in the ER and he’s trying to tell me something but I can’t ever hear what it is. Then I either wake up or like, spend a longer time trying to listen to him.”

 

“Jeez,” said Pickles in response. His voice was softer than normal, Nathan noticed. “That sounds fucking awful, man.”

 

Nathan was in the middle of trying to shrug it off when Pickles reached down and touched his cheek. “Uh,” he said, but the rest of the words disappeared as he looked up at the smaller man and saw Pickles’ eyes half-lidded, a small smile on his lips. He wasn’t making eye contact with Nathan, which was new.

 

“I, um,” said Pickles, hesitantly, “think I might have a crush on you.”

 

 _What?_ Nathan thought, eyebrows shooting up to his hairline. 

 

Pickles didn’t move his hand, and Nathan didn’t make any attempt to move it for him. “Like, a big crush? Or whatever size of crush makes me feel like a schoolgirl around you.”

 

He flicked his eyes over to look at Nathan’s, and seemed relieved that Nathan wasn’t bucking him off or punching him in the nose. “But, uh. Yeah. I know this is probably a weird time and all, but-” Pickles said, before Nathan thought _what the hell do I even have to lose_ and _oh_ this _explains why he was wondering if I was dating Magnus_ at the same time, shrugged to himself, and surged up to kiss the smaller man.

 

Pickles went “Mmph??” into the kiss, his eyes still open, but melted into Nathan once he realized what was happening. Nathan brought his hands up, put one on Pickles’ waist. His skin was soft, warm- and so were his lips, moving against Nathan’s in a hesitant rhythm. They broke apart for a second, Nathan’s hand still on Pickles’ waist, Pickles flushing a brilliant pink, both of them breathing a little heavier than usual.

 

“Shit,” said Pickles, grinning.

 

“Yeah,” said Nathan. “Holy shit?”

 

Then Pickles was pulling him up into a kiss, and this time Nathan was the one melting, sinking back down onto his pillow and pulling Pickles down with him, their bellies touching. Nathan moved his other hand up, put it on Pickles’ other hip, pressed down and felt the smaller man’s warm weight on him. He had to fight against the impulse to grind up into Pickles, but then the drummer broke the kiss and was kissing down Nathan’s neck and his hands wrapped around Nathan’s broad back and he touched the scar and—

 

“Fuck, fuck, stop, fuck,” Nathan almost yelled, jolting and jerking Pickles’ arms out from underneath him. _Don’t think about him don’t think about it don’t think about him fuck fuck fuck-_

 

Pickles unstraddled Nathan not particularly gracefully, sat on the bed beside him with wide worried eyes. “Dood, are you okay? Did I do something wrong?”

 

“You touched the scar,” Nathan managed to grind out. _He stabbed you and you forgave him and you_ forgave _him and you can’t let go of it, you should have called for help then not six weeks later, you should have gotten him help, you should have known, you should have known._ “Where he stabbed me.” The world was starting to look cartoonish, unreal, and Nathan closed his eyes and tried to focus on his heartbeat.

 

Pickles sucked in a breath. “Fuck. I’m so sorry, Nathan. Seriously. I’m really, really, fuckin-“

 

“It’s okay,” he muttered. The thoughts continued, getting quieter as Nathan focused on his breathing, his heartbeat starting to slow from a hummingbird’s pace to the slower thump he was used to. The blush and the heat he’d been feeling had been totally replaced by a cold stone in the pit of his stomach, and he could feel his hands had gotten gross and clammy. “I don’t think, um, I can do any more kissing stuff right now.” Nathan winced at hearing himself say “kissing stuff” but it was the first phrase that came to mind.

 

“Should I leave?”

 

Nathan looked over at Pickles, who had balled himself up on the other side of the bed. “Not unless you want to, I guess. I might have another nightmare.”

 

Pickles gave a tiny grin and slid himself under the covers again. “I’ll wake you up if you do, I promise.”

 

“Thanks,” said Nathan, then thought _what the hell_ because yeah, having Pickles around helped stop the entire world ungracefully becoming an unreal version of itself, and pulled the smaller man against his chest. “Is, uh. Is this okay?” Pickles was _so_ warm and it seemed to be almost an innate comfort to have him so close. Nathan felt a little fluttery at that but figured he’d deal with it anyway. His heart had slowed to its usual pace, his breathing was already the soft deep rhythm that foretold sleep. 

 

“Yeah,” said Pickles. Nathan could hear more than see his luminescent blush. “This is great.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> isn't it frustrating when u want to write about kissing but all your plot gets in the way


End file.
